Tom Mankiewicz

Tom Mankiewicz is the younger son of famed Hollywood producer and director Joseph Mankiewicz. He also wrote "Diamonds Are Forever" and collaborated on 4 other Bond films. He has recently given a interview on those heady 007 days. Excerpts are below or you can read the whole article here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'And the line originally was when Bond sipped it, "Pity about your liver, sir, unusually fine Solera. '61, I believe."
And Cubby's lawyer was reading the script, and he was part of the wine jury who gave the stars out to different wines, and he said, "Would you tell that kid that there is no year on a Sherry bottle, it can't be 61. What they do is take casks and put the worst vintage on top and then the next and the next and then the best vintage is on the bottom, so they all run through the best vintage but there's no year. So quickly, embarrassed as I was, I changed the scene to:

Bond: A Sherry Commander? Pity about your liver, sir, unusually fine Solera. '51, I believe.
M: There is no year for sherry, 007.
Bond: I was referring to the original vintage on which the sherry is based, sir. 1851, unmistakable. '
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Your trademark in the Bond films is your witty dialogue.

I enjoyed doing it because it was dialogue you couldn't get away with in any other kind of movie except Bond.
In DAF, they try to sneak diamonds up the asshole of a corpse and Bond and Felix are looking at it, and Lieter says, "I give up, the diamonds are here somewhere."
Bond says, "Alimentary, my dear Leiter."

And Cubby says, "What the fuck is this?"
It's the alimentary canal, Cubby. It means it's stuck up his ass. He said, "Take it out -- no one will know that." Guy Hamilton said, "Oh no, I like that." So it stayed in the picture.

Cubby and I were at Mann's Chinese standing in the back. It was a full house and Sean says, "Alimentary, my dear Leiter. Out of 1500 people two guys laughed. Cubby looked over to me and said, "Big deal - two doctors." '
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Paul McCartney writes Live and Let Die. Cubby says to me, "Boy didn't we get taken, listen to this," And plays Live and Let Die, which he hates, and I said to him, "Cubby, this is terrific."
Jerry Moss of EMI records was in London at the time; Cubby loved him, and I said, "Let Jerry have a listen to this." Jerry listened to it and he said, "Cubby, I can guarantee you that this record will go platinum and it will become the number one song in the world. If you don't like it, I'll be happy to give you one million dollars for your rights to the song right now." Cubby just stared. Starting the next day, Cubby said, "We have this great song by Paul." And what's his name who arranged the score?
George Martin
George wrote a wonderful score. '
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I rewrote the Spy Who Loved Me at Cubby's house for no money and no credit because they had already given out the credits -- you could only have two non Brits in the main titles. Cubby paid me cash under the table to rewrite the picture and when Roger Moore started getting the rewrites in England, he said, "This is Wankiewicz, Wankiewicz wrote this." He could tell right away, "Good, he's on the picture." Cubby said, "No, no, no, no, no one is suppose to know he's on the picture." '